Maria W. Stewart

(1803 - 1879)

Born to free Black parents but orphaned at five, married to a successful free Black man but defrauded of her inheritance after his untimely death, Maria W. Stewart knew freedom and its limits in her time. A member of Beacon Hill’s free Black community in Boston, she began writing for the antislavery newspaper The Liberator in 1831, moved by a religious rebirth precipitated by the death of both her husband and the abolitionist David Walker. Stewart brought her sermonic prose style to the podium in four speeches delivered to audiences of men and women between 1832 and 1833. Vocal critics contributed to the premature end to her speaking career, objecting that a woman should not speak before a mixed audience. Stewart was among the first American women to do so.